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Good morning.ÌýÌý

From my study window three floors up, I look out over houses and trees. ÌýSycamores, limes, oaks, beechesÌý - billowing out of gardens and the park below me.Ìý Their millions of leaves are turning now, and beginning to drop onto hedges and pavements where they dry in the September sun, and crinkle into brown dust.

These trees are slow and ancient, and for a moment they steady a chaotic world. Ìý‘There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees’, wrote the American poet, Mary Oliver:

‘A quiet house, some greenÌý... (Copyright material)Ìý

There was a picture in a newspaper last week of a young woman in Ukraine standing in the rubble of her home, which had been destroyed by fighting. ÌýShe’s holding her hand to her head in shock and disbelief.Ìý Behind her, shrubs and trees are flattened under bricks and corrugated iron.Ìý Another newspaper had a photo of a man in Liberia who had escaped from an Ebola clinic, and was trying to find food and water in the town.Ìý He was wrestled to the ground by men in body suits, and taken away in a van.

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We cannot be apart from war and suffering, or out of hearing of lamentation.Ìý We cannot live ‘a little way away from everywhere’. In this week of constitutional agonizing over our own future on these islands, the world is still out there.

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Compassionate God, be with those who have no choices in the face of war, suffering and poverty.Ìý Grant them your light, and your peace. Amen